


Marking Time

by ashkatom



Series: 100 Follower Ficathon [1]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-16
Updated: 2012-07-16
Packaged: 2017-11-10 02:33:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,534
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/461289
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ashkatom/pseuds/ashkatom
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The revolution succeeds. You're not really sure how things are meant to work out after that, but this whole growing old business is kind of weird and you don't like it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Marking Time

**Author's Note:**

> The prompt for this fic was "Elderly!SuffPsii. As domestic husbands, living in a cozy hive together ouo Psii’s eyesight is starting to go and Suff has bad hips and a bad knee. TAKE THIS PROMPT AND RUN WITH IT."
> 
> I ran with it.

“Disciple wrote again.” Karcin drops the letter, already opened, on your chest as he passes by on the way to the nutrition block. You prop yourself up on an elbow and squint at it - come on, you have told your adventuresome greenblood to not handwrite her letters while running from a herd of carnivorous tuskbeasts before, her handwriting is loopy as all shit and requires a magnifying glass. You’re still squinting at it and moving it back and forth to see if that makes a difference when Karcin comes back with two mugs of some tea or other.  
“I’m going to athume she lotht an arm and had to write with the wrong hand,” you say as you accept your mug and shift your legs so he can sit down.

“I keep telling you, go to the optometerrorist,” he says, and takes the letter back to scan through it intently. “It’s just the usual stuff. Horribly cute moirail spats, Rosa’s doing good with her apprentices, she’s going to come visit in a couple perigees.”

“I keep telling you, not until they let me have red and blue lentheth,” you say affably, and shove him with a foot. “Tell DC that I thend my love.”

\--

You are getting old.

It’s kind of weird, actually. Growing old was something that you never thought would happen to you. Karcin’s rebellion was definitely a lost cause, you were sure of it. The voices in your head said so. But then he got a metric shit-ton of followers and somehow his revolution succeeded, to a point.

And here you are, standing in front of a mirror and squinting at your reflection. You’re getting wrinkles, what the fuck even.

“I uthed to be pretty,” you say mournfully to Karcin.

He slaps the back of your head, more gently than normal. “You’re still pretty, you idiot.”

You squint a little closer at your reflection. “I think I have a grey hair.”

Karcin rolls his eyes and leaves.

\--

Getting old is actually really awkward. Nobody ever told you, probably because they secretly thought none of you would ever make it as well. Dolorosa’s pretty much immortal, since the new tyrian they dredged up for the council that replaced the empire has a soft spot for grubs and their caretakers. What she does is necessary to the future, you know, but it’s still a bit grating to see her looking exactly the same sweep after sweep while you and Karcin start breaking down.

You don’t think she likes it any more than you do.

She visits every couple of perigees like clockwork, and quietly does a lot of things that need doing while you and Karcin sit around and feel kind of useless. You, because you can’t even see what the fuck is wrong until it’s super broken, and Karcin, well...

You think Karcin is breaking down a bit quicker than you are. As much as you don’t want to think about it, you notice the way he winces when getting up, and the way he’ll rest most of weight on his left leg if he has to stand up for longer than a few minutes.

There comes a point when you just cannot ignore it any longer. There aren’t culling drones anymore, so you are going to be left to wither away over the sweeps. Your eyes will grow cloudy and dim, Karcin won’t be able to move around at all, and one day one of you will just stop working and you’re sure as fuck not letting it be him.

“Get up, ruthtboneth!” You pull Karcin off the seating block and hand him a coat. “We’re going to the doctor. It’ll be an adventure.”

\--

You get glasses. They are not red and blue, which you take as a personal insult and sulk about until Karcin talks to the optometerrorist about special-ordering you a pair and pays a ridiculous amount of money to craft them. When you put them on for the first time, you realise just how blind you were and wince about it.

Karcin reaches out and adjusts them, smiling in what you can now recognise as relief. “They suit you.”

You have absolutely no choice but to celebrate your newfound vision twofold (eyes and glasses, look, it’s a thing with you) by crushing your matesprit to your chest and kissing him. His arms are solid around you and he’s warm in the way that only he is, and you don’t even care when the optometerrorist tells you to get a block.

Your problem is fixed fairly easily. Karcin is less lucky. He ends up with boxes of pills and series of appointments and the threat of surgery looming in the future. The only good thing about it is that the hospitroll refuses to take payment from the Signless, which makes Karcin feel guilty, but you think he’s earned a few perks by now.

“This is ridiculous,” he says, staring at the array of boxes scattered over your nutrition prep slab. “I have to take these every single night for the rest of my fucking life, Pol, this is absolutely, completely, soul-crushing and I feel like I am going to puke at the injustice of it.”

You wrap your skinny arms around him from behind and bury your face in his hair, which has only gotten less controllable with the passage of time. He pats your hand absently as he reads the label on one of the boxes, and you quietly freak out about the future, which is not something you’re used to. You think you might puke at the injustice of it, too.

Karcin groans. “I have to take this one twice a day! This is-”

You squeeze him gently. “You’ll do it,” you say, with as much certainty as you can muster. “Or I’ll tell DR that you’re being a twit.”

“Harsh,” he says, but he cracks open the boxes one by one and swallows the pills dry.

\--

Disciple visits a little less often than Dolorosa does, but every time she comes she brings food from where she’s been, stories of the things she’s done, and a feeling of life and laughter that lasts long after she leaves. Sometimes her moirail comes with her, sometimes she drags along a matesprit or kismesis if they’ve been together long enough to warrant introductions, but mostly she comes alone. Given that you’re essentially hiding in the middle of fucking nowhere with Karcin, you can’t blame her for the desire to keep your family insular.

She’s starting to show the very first signs of aging, little wrinkles around her eyes deepening when she smiles and a tendency to just conk out after you’ve been out walking all day. She’s the one that will live through this best, you think, and you don’t begrudge her that.

You eat dinner all together and get in a food fight and it’s like nothing has changed. She starts humming a song that was popular when you were ten or so as you all clean up, and you spend the rest of the morning singing anything you can remember together until your voices give out, then fall asleep in a tangle in the middle of the communal block. You all grumble in the morning when you wake up ache-y and stiff, but it was worth it.

\--

Slowly, you become even more isolated, because leaving the house is just kind of annoying and takes a lot of preparation. You get movies streamed to you, food delivered, hire a pupa from down the street to mow your lawn occasionally, and just spend your time together. Sometimes you talk. A lot of the time, you just wind up in the same room doing different things. You like that the most, because the room feels kind of empty without Karcin in it and you have to go find him and sit with him if you get lonely.

He reads to you a lot, since your eyesight is getting worse and the last time he found you coding at six in the morning there was an argument of epic proportions. You try to pay him back by doing the stuff he finds painful now, like standing around and cooking, or cleaning up around the place. It works out okay.

\--

You’ve kind of settled into being old now, you guess. It’s not exactly fun, at all, but it’s not as worrying as the night you first realised you really needed glasses, or as terrifying as when Karcin gave up and got his hip replaced. You rely on him, and he relies on you, and you’ve made your peace with the fact that as soon as one of you goes the other probably won’t be far behind.

For now, your arm is around Karcin, who fell asleep in the middle of reading aloud to you. His breathing is slow and even, and when you move to rest your head on his chest his heartbeat is soothing enough that you close your eyes and just listen to the thud-thud-thud of it. You may not have forever with him, but you’ve had longer than you expected, and you’re going to treasure every moment of what’s left.


End file.
